BATON ROUGE — It is not often that Southeastern Conference Football borrows a page from SEC Baseball.

For example, could you imagine a SEC football game being halted with 1:08 left to play and the score tied so the visiting team can bus to the airport to catch a commercial flight home? Commercial flight? It has happened in the late innings in SEC Baseball far too often. A baseball game rained out on a Sunday also has not been made up on a Monday even when school was out. These things happen even though the SEC basically prints money, particularly since the SEC Network started in 2014.

But today, the SEC is pitching a football schedule that is foul with a weekend full of mid-week games. "SEC - it just means more," is the conference's motto and appears on the football media guide.

Uh, not today.

The Citadel is at No. 1 Alabama. Idaho is at No. 13 Florida, Middle Tennessee is at No. 17 Kentucky, Liberty is at Auburn, Massachusetts is at No. 5 Georgia. Alabama-Birmingham is at Texas A&M. Chattanooga is at South Carolina. And Rice is at No. 7 LSU.

But not all mid-week games are created equal, as even the LSU baseball program has struggled against Tulane and Louisiana-Lafayette at times in non-weekend series. Middle Tennessee is 7-3 overall and atop the Conference USA East division at 6-1, while UAB is 9-1 and atop the CUSA West at 7-0. So Kentucky and Texas A&M need to be careful.

Those two are the only SEC schools listed of the above eight pairings not favored by 30 or more points. The Wildcats are favored by 16 over Middle Tennessee, while the Aggies are giving up 17 points to UAB.

Glenn Guilbeau(Photo: File photo)

In SEC baseball, mid-week games are most often glorified exhibition games that count in between SEC weekend series. But there are so many baseball games that a loss in a mid-week game rarely hurts the Ratings Percentage Index, particularly if the SEC team wins the next weekend series.

SEC teams tend to rest their best pitchers in the mid-week games. So, in essence, when LSU hosts Nicholls State or McNeese State next season on week day nights, it will be practice. Same with Alabama hosting Samford and UAB in 2019, and Tennessee hosting Belmont.

Such is the case across the SEC today with one very important difference. A loss by an SEC team would be infinitely more damaging than a mid-week loss in baseball. If LSU were to lose to 44-point underdog and 1-10 Rice tonight, for example, the national embarrassment would be so great, someone might get fired. Rice is currently No. 1 in ESPN's Bottom 10 poll, by the way.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart may have to change his last name if he loses to 45-point underdog UMass. South Carolina coach Will Muschamp's head may really explode this time if he loses to 31-point underdog Chattanooga. Florida coach Dan Mullen may wish he was still small potatoes in Starkville if he loses to 39-point underdog Idaho. And Auburn coach Gus Malzahn's approach to 33-point underdog Liberty better be, "Give me Liberty," or, well, not death, but he may get fired.

It happened to Arkansas coach Jack Crowe when his Razorbacks lost to then-Division I-AA The Citadel, 10-3, on Sept. 5, 1992, in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The next day, Arkansas athletic director Frank Broyles fired Crowe.

What would happen if coach Nick Saban's Alabama team lost to The Citadel today? The Tide is a 50-point favorite. And remember, Saban's first Alabama team in 2007 was favored by 24 to beat Louisiana-Monroe, and lost 21-14. Saban didn't get fired, but he made a fool of himself when he compared the loss to the 9/11 and Pearl Harbor attacks on the United States. And when his publicity director tried to spin it, he looked almost as silly as Saban.

Orgeron got a taste of what Crowe and Saban went through when his No. 25 Tigers lost to 20-point underdog Troy, 24-21. He didn't get fired, but LSU had more meetings over the next three days than targeting calls and unsportsmanlike conduct penalties this season.

"Listen man, we learned our lesson last year," Orgeron said, clearly referencing Troy, when asked about a "game like Rice" at his press conference Monday. "And that's not going to happen to us again. So, we're going full bore against these guys."

That will be the best strategy, at least for a quarter or a half regardless of the point spread, depending on how things go.

All totaled, SEC teams are favored in non-conference games in this mid-week Saturday by 275 points.

In the meantime, weekends like this were not made for Michelob, rather a nine-game SEC schedule.

NOTE OF THE WEEK: Rice is No. 126 in the nation out of 129 upper level schools in pass defense efficiency at 167.40 with 268 yards allowed a game and 25 touchdowns.

STAT OF THE WEEK: LSU coach Ed Orgeron improved to 7-0 in games after losses with a win at Arkansas last week, but do not write home to mom about that one. It's a bit like leading the minor leagues in home runs. Because, had you made a Major League team, you wouldn't have hit so many home runs. And a college football coach with a 12-game season could go 6-6 every year and never lose two in a row.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: ”It was just great to see the players happy again.” — LSU coach Ed Orgeron after beating Arkansas a week after the loss to Alabama.